In order to serve its listeners and maintain high ratings, radio stations conduct music surveys to determine the listener appeal of the songs which make up the radio station's music library. For example, radio stations are often interested in determining whether their listeners have become tired of a particular song due to overplay or merely due to a lack of popularity. One known method by which radio stations survey listeners is to conduct an "auditorium" test of a focus group of listeners. An "auditorium" test usually comprises gathering about one hundred music listeners in a public auditorium at the request of a radio station or research company. A brief representative portion of each song or "hook" is then played over loud speakers to the participants as a group who are then asked to record their opinion of the song represented by each "hook."
One problem associated with "auditorium" testing is convincing a sufficient number of listeners from a focus group to travel to the auditorium venue to participate in the "auditorium" survey. As an enticement to the listeners, the radio station must provide a costly reward in the form of cash or merchandise. Further, the sponsoring radio station must incur the cost of renting the auditorium and the equipment necessary to conduct the "auditorium" survey.
More importantly, however, it is believed that the "auditorium" survey is not highly accurate since the focus group of listeners are asked to listen to the song "hooks" in unfamiliar surroundings and under different conditions than those under which the focus group usually listens to the music represented by each hook.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a music survey method and apparatus which is inexpensive to conduct wherein a focus group listens to song "hooks" under the same conditions as those under which the focus group normally listens to the songs on the station.